


What the Heart Cannot Endure, it Sheds

by sleepingseeker



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3558743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingseeker/pseuds/sleepingseeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt on Tumblr: 'I'd love to see you write a fic on the first time Donnie saw April cry.'</p><p>The first time he saw her cry he vowed would be the last. Ever resourceful, Donatello uses the tremendous ache her tears cause within him as singular motivation: He will never make her cry again.</p><p>Set right after the Mutation Situation where April’s father is turned into the bat mutant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Heart Cannot Endure, it Sheds

It wasn’t like the movies, where the girl collapsed into tearful sobs, hiding her face away with her palms, at once ashamed and embarrassed at the display; unable to control herself once the dam broke; eventually falling into the arms of the one nearest to her, usually the love interest, who just happened to be at hand; or a beloved gal pal who understood better than the jerk who caused the outburst to begin with; no.

This was a shimmer and then a brimming, following the inevitable spilling over, tracking down her pale cheeks between her freckles, connecting the dots to trace the pattern of her emotion.  All done within an expanding silence that chilled and smothered him at once.  With an alien hardness in her eyes so full of hatred and despair that he felt it inside of himself; somewhere between his sternum and stomach; felt it like a foreign substance lodged there, stuck and aching.  A physical thing twisting into him; burrowing.  Deeper. Imprinting inside his marrow, the shape of her sorrow; the disappointment in him, and her fury.  

More real than his own heart breaking even as it galloped.  More final than the first frost that kills all the delicate and gentle things.

Donatello’s words were choked and half-formed as she pushed him aside, storming away without a glance back.  Dismissing him and his excuses; ignoring the feeble apologies tumbling from between his numb lips. Leaving him and his brothers to stand in the hollow of their failure; unable to make it better.  Unable to take back the tears she shed because of them.  

Because of him.

* * *

Exhaustion warred with the giddy rush of astonishment as he scrambled to the scene. Beneath the tarp, the lump struggled and moaned.  Within Donatello, his heart was a rapidly firing piston.  

If the retro-mutagen was a failure, all his effort, all his promises would amount to nothing.

April hurried to stand beside him; holding her breath and so tense he could feel it coming off her.  He wanted to wrap his arm around her, to steady her, to offer words of comfort and reassurance; but he couldn’t risk it.  Because, what if he missed something?  What if he was a failure yet again? His throat bobbed as it tightened.  

He wouldn’t be able to stand more tears.  He couldn’t deal with the desperate disappointment so carefully veiled beneath her recent support any longer.  It had to work.  It had to.

When her father’s hand, human and fully functioning, popped through the material of the tarp, followed by a normal, if not utterly shocked, human head, April cried out and flung her arms around her father.

The bubbling laugh of relief erupted from him, involuntarily. Cut off by the sight of her face as she turned to look at him; eyes tearful and streaming freely; beaming with gratitude and happiness.  

He’d made her cry, again.  

And the thing lodged in his chest all this time melted so suddenly, the weight of it dissipating so immediately, that he pitched forward and had to lean upon his staff so as not to fall on his face in the street.

Head low between his shoulders as he caught his breath, overwhelmed with relief and shaky from the long trail that got him to this point; he felt the hands of his brothers clapping him on the arms and shell, congratulating him.  He heard the questions from Kirby and the jittery laughter from Casey and April as they rambled on and on about getting home and getting him dressed.  

When he looked up, his eyes were glassy and wet.  And he was never happier.


End file.
